DS Motherhood
by Thor2000
Summary: Angelique clashes with a powerful sorceress who has abducted her son. This story is in the same canon as my other Dark Shadows stories with the same characters and history.
1. Chapter 1

Those who had recently moved to Collinsport were not completely aware of what the town used to be like. It was an artist colony and a fishing port on Frenchman's Bay forty miles from Bangor between Winter Harbor and Bar Harbor. The fishermen from the region sailed in large fishing boats the size of football fields while the tourists and natives frequented the open verandas and eateries of the seaside shops and markets. The days of dogs howling at night were long forgotten. Few of the local law enforcement officers knew of the strange deaths that once haunted the prospering town. In the center of town, Eagle Hill Cemetery had fallen under the County Preservation Society and was being kept cleaned and maintained with donations from the local Collins family. The old courthouse which once whispered of witchcraft trials and accusations of evil spells was now the County Historical Society full of artifacts and relics from the past, but whenever Carolyn Stoddard Loomis drove past it, she still unconditionally felt the nape of her neck for injuries she once endured there. That was over twenty years ago and things had changed, she was married to a man who loved her and whom she loved in returned.

If anyone had ever told her that she would have married William Hollingshead Loomis, she would have denied it. He had once attacked not just her, but Maggie Evans as well. Thank the gods for a man like Barnabas Collins who saw something good in the former felon and directed it to something good. Willie Loomis had risked his life to save Carolyn from Buzz Hackett at a time when she was still grieving the loss of her first husband. It was at that moment that Carolyn realized she could not dwell on the past; she needed a person in her life just as Willie did. As she departed from the Collinsport Civic Center built on the site of the former Todd Antique Store, she recognized a certain young adult on the sidewalk before Coleman's Pharmacy and turned her car around in the parking lot of the Historical Society. Slowly re-entering traffic, she slowed to a crawl and rolled forward along the parked cars at the curb to her right along the street.

"JR…" She called to her firstborn son. "I'm heading home, do you want a ride?"

"I'm meeting William and the guys at the Blue Whale." He stopped and leaned over her car window. "He'll drive me home." He eyed his mother's leather pocketbook by her. "Can I have some money?'

The Collinwood matriarch rolled her eyes and lightly groaned. Forty years ago when she was his age, she had just charged everything to her mother's account, but both her son and daughter loved the use of cash. She did not trust them anymore with credit cards ever since Lizzie came home with a truckload of clothes purchased from that new strip mall on the interstate to Bangor.

"I seem to remember doing this just the other day." She told herself out loud. "What do you do with your allowance?"

"Stuff."

"Stuff…" Carolyn repeated him as she gave him a fifty-dollar bill. "You know, some high school seniors get jobs…"

"There's no where to work around here." JR claimed.

"No where to…" A car honked behind Carolyn and she looked into her rear view mirror to a mini-van behind her. "We'll talk about this at home." She sighed and took her foot off the brake, rolling forward to turn onto Curtis Road and drive around the park to get toward Collins Road toward the estate. The young heir mused a bit and checked out the street. Why should he get a job? His family was one of the top wealthiest New England families on the East Coast. He was fifteen when he met his first Kennedy, eight years old when he first dabbled in the stock market and was schooled by his Aunt Maggie acting as Governess for the first twelve years of his life. He had it made! Why would he ruin it with a job?

Dashing down the street past several sidewalk shops and markets, he crossed the tree-lined street and made his way to the other side to reach the docks. Taking a moment to notice and appreciate the shape of two younger ladies coming out of Amantea's Dress Shop, he whirled round to spin down an alleyway and down descending stairs looking down over the bay. The piers below were layered like steps for an immense giant, each level with its own restaurants, shops and markets. If one wanted the best seafood in town, this was the place to come. Most of these eateries got their fresh fish directly from the fishing trawlers based on the other side of Dead Man's Cove. For home cooking, most Collinsport natives either ate in the diner off the Collinsport Inn or Lali's Kitchen on the edge of town down near the new library and high school, but for seafood or just basic hanging out, the Blue Whale Bar and Grill had a long prosperous history going back to 1850 and a retinue of several owners. Reached by rope-lined boardwalks and restored wood stairways, the locale was also a hub of community activity ranging from covert meetings between businessmen and fishermen and even an odd bar fight when tension rose to fisticuffs. JR's father used to frequent this place, and his Uncle Quentin called it a second home for meeting ladies before getting tamed by matrimony. Their progeny now called it a hideout from Collinwood. There was many a night Quentin and Willie came looking for their sons if but to catch them fraternizing with young ladies in the corner booth. Grinning at another young lady, JR pulled on the door and made his entrance into the busy bar and grill. It was adorned in antique fishing nets, nautical gear, shells and preserved starfish and creatures around tables and chairs and one row of booths along the far wall. The jukebox had not been updated since 1975. The scent of beer and ribs met his senses first and then he caught the image of his cousins at a center table near the back hall to the restrooms.

"Bad news, he found us." Jamison Collins looked to William Collins and took another bite of his hamburger. William was eating his usual crab dinner with a side of cole slaw. He had it so many times that the owner called it William's Special. Sucking the meet out of another crab leg, William mused on a thought and looked to the woman eyeing him from the end booth. She was a bit mature for him; blonde and attractive like a television actress in the real world, but she had been watching him since he had arrived with Jamison. He wasn't sure what to make of it. It wasn't like he actually considered himself attractive enough to garner the attention of older women when the girls he went to college with barely gave him the time of day.

"I was thinking…" JR borrowed a chair from another table and joined his cousins. "You guys recall that really old house on the hill just before reaching Millbridge…" He stole one of Jamison's French fries and dipped it in ketchup before popping it into his mouth. "Let's head up there and stay the night…" He smirked liking these plans. "Junior Goodlett claimed he saw a body in there. Let's go check it out."

"Junior Goodlett also said there was a body off Widow's Hill." William swirled some of his crabmeat in butter before pulling it out with his fork and eating it. "And that was just a mannequin. Besides, I'm driving back to college on Monday." He remained as logical and pragmatic as ever.

"And I've football camp." Jamison swatted JR than let him steal another of his French fries. "Don't you still have that mannequin dressed like Cyndi Lauper in your room?"

"She's dressed like Madonna and you know it!" JR snapped back. "Come on guys, we haven't hung out since we were kids! Every time you freaking guys come home, you come here, get your usual burger and crab, attend another freaking family dinner and then leave me again. I want out of this freaking little town!"

"We got our own lives, dude…" Jamison swatted JR's hand from his fries. "Look, just because you're still stuck in high school with Sara, Lizzie and Amanda doesn't mean we have to revolve our lives around you."

"Yeah, besides," William used his napkin to clean his hands before finishing off his last crab leg. "Uncle David says I can start following him on cases. He's traveling out west to check out the Overlook Hotel this summer and you know I want to check that place out." He referred to the Collinsport Ghost Society his Uncle David had founded in the former Trask Mortuary location. Owning two local restaurants and starting a local computer provider, the former Collins menace had matured into a top local businessman, leaving custodianship of the estate known as Collinwood to his cousin Carolyn and focusing into his own paranormal research agency for examining haunted activity in the area. Most of the family had predicted it was going to happen since the days he once claimed he saw coffins in the basement of the old house.

"You guys are killing me." JR distracted Jamison to the bar area and then stole a French fry. William cracked his last crab leg and had that feeling again. The blonde woman had yet to stop looking him over. He acknowledged her with a slight smile and turned round again a bit spooked by her attention. He sipped his soda, started poking at his crabmeat and found his attention drifting to other realms and topics.

"Do you guys ever have strange dreams?" He changed the subject. JR and Jamison were struck silent by the intimate question for a moment and looked at each other. This was not unusual. William was a thinker, JR was a goof and Jamison was a thrill-seeker. It had been this way since they were kids.

"I dream I'm James Bond surrounded by hot babes chasing me across the country." JR confessed. Their personalities even sometimes intertwined.

"I dream of Victoria Principal…" Jamison beamed dreamily like his father. "In a very tiny bikini…"

"How tiny?" JR sat up straight at the table.

"Last couple of weeks," William placed his crabmeat in butter and swirled it around with his fork after his last bite of slaw. "I've had these dreams that I was a kid again and surrounded by all these other kids. We live in this huge castle lit by candlelight with this woman. I think they're supposed to be my brothers and sisters and the lady's my mom. It's so vivid…. I wonder if they're like memories of a past life or something."

"How hot is your mom in these dreams?" JR asked. The look from Jamison and William made him realize he had said something stupid.

"You want to know what she looks like…" William ate his last amount of crabmeat and slid aside his plate of the discarded lobster shells. "She's sitting right over there!" He turned round to the woman who had been watching him, but she had vanished from the bar and grill without being seen!


	2. Chapter 2

Collinwood rested on the highest hill with the city limits. Resting on forty acres of rolling hillside and woodland, the estate rested high enough to be seen from town and ended at the cliffs over Frenchman's Bay, a point known locally as Widow's Hill. Trees surrounded the perimeters of the estate and along the circular driveway that ran the boundary of the property. While the main five thousand foot driveway ascended over a brick and stone enforced roadway to the main house, the surrounding drive ran from the main entrance at 1300 Collins Road, dipped right toward the Old House on the north end of the property, past and around forgotten barns and minor cottages and then traveling along the west end down toward Rose Cottage at the south east back road to Frid Drive on the south end. The driveway then recaught the main drive down the hill past the caretaker's cottage, the Collins family cemetery and back out another entrance on to Collins Road. The walk from Rose Cottage to the main house took about fifteen to twenty minutes for Amanda Collins to make. The twelve-room mansion was the home of Quentin and Maggie Collins, her parents. He was a retired world traveler, but she had risen from governess to owning her own exercise studio with Carolyn Stoddard-Loomis and now she had her own spot on the Collinsport town council. It was very good for a young lady who once worked as a waitress at the diner and now owned that diner. Amanda loved her parents, but she often felt like an outsider to the family. Everyone in the family had either blonde or dark hair, but she had the longest naturally curly mane of red hair in all of town. It bobbed over her suede jacket as she ascended the stairway up to the backyard veranda and gardens of the main house. Why should she have red hair? Her father had brown hair, her mother had auburn hair and her grandfather, Sam Evans, long passed from this world, had brown hair. Maggie once told Amanda that her mother had red hair, but it was hard to tell from those faded black and white photos. Continuing on her way, Amanda stepped into the shadow of the main house, her feet scuffing across the cobblestone pathway and made her way toward the back entrance into the dining room. She turned left down the back way to the drawing room past the back stairway. Music was playing somewhere in the house. It was the same moody "Shadows in the Night" vinyl record her father played on the Victrola in the music room on the other side of the foyer. The quiet and insecure young beauty looked up toward her mother and Aunt Carolyn discussing the books of the exercise studio they owned together.

"Mom…" Amanda lightly gasped above a whisper. "Is dad home?"

Maggie looked at Carolyn, they looked toward the music room together with the music playing and re-noticed Amanda.

"You need to ask?" Maggie was not fond of her husband's music choice. He claimed he liked it because everyone else didn't.

"Oh…" Amanda insecurely took a deep breath then forced herself to stride forward to the foyer, but along the way she found the gumption to stop and turn back to her mother. Carolyn mentioned something about having karate classes at their studio, and Maggie wondered where to find a karate instructor. She was about to say something else and realized her daughter was waiting to break into the conversation.

"Honey," Maggie shifted her weight to her other leg. "Is there something else?"

"Can I have a car?" The teenage heiress asked then wished she hadn't. She looked around wanting to vanish.

"Well, sure, honey, but you know…" Maggie set aside the ledger for her studio. "Your cousins purchased their own."

"Forget it…."

"No, baby…" Maggie gasped and took a deep breath trying to get this girl out of her shell. Psychiatrists, therapists and counselors couldn't get this girl to open up to anyone. "Look, I'll… talk to your father about it."

"Okay…"

"No promises."

"Okay…" Amanda turned to the direction of the music room. Maggie brushed her long hair aside and turned her doe-eyed face back toward Carolyn. Her once long hair now cut short into a shoulder-length bob, the current matriarch of Collinwood silently reflected by stroking the front of her forehead and looked from Amanda and back to Maggie.

"Is she still mooning over William?" She spoke of a childhood infatuation that Amanda had never grown out of.

"I don't know." Maggie whispered back. "I can barely get her to talk to me." The sound of footsteps skirted across the upstairs corridor above their heads in the form of Carolyn's middle child, a vivacious and flirtatious blonde bombshell named Lizzie Loomis who used her looks to get what she wanted. Boy-crazy, exuberant and sometimes vacuous, the blonde heiress skipped across the top landing of the foyer and screamed out a warning to her mother.

"I'm heading out!!" She hiked up her boobs, tossed her curly blonde locks out and started scrambling down the stairs as fast as she could. At the bottom, she met Amanda standing before her. Slightly taller, the redhead stopped and looked upon the young Madonna-wannabee and recognized something about her crazy cousin.

"Is that my leather jacket?" Amanda accepted it.

"No!"

"I've been looking everywhere for that!" Amanda voice rose. "You're wearing my calfskin boots! I haven't even worn them yet!" She started revealing why redheads were temperamental. "You lied! Sara hasn't been stealing my clothes! You have!!" Lizzie started dashing back the way she had come as Amanda tried to grab her. Her voice screaming, Lizzie vaulted back up to the upstairs hallway and hit the top landing instead as Amanda attacked her. Carolyn dropped her pen and joined Maggie to stop the fighting. Amanda had Lizzie pinned to the top balcony just short of the door and was pulling her jacket off her thieving back.

"Amanda, let her go!!" Carolyn was screaming.

"Get off me, you cow!" Lizzie started pulling red hair while Amanda started going after her boots, but her smaller cousin squirmed and pushed her into the wall. From the music room, Quentin heard the scuffling and turned off his music. Maggie started coming toward her daughter and her niece, but Amanda grabbed her boot from her cousin's foot and started lifting up on purpose. Lizzie's head went over the top of the balcony and her feet were leaving the floor. She was going to throw her over the top. Carolyn watched in shock as Maggie grabbed Lizzie by the top of her jeans and tried pushing her daughter off her. Amanda grabbed her other boot and started pushing her thieving relative over the railing.

"Amanda!! Stop it!!" Screaming and hollering echoed through the house as Chloe the housekeeper stopped her dusting to watch the fracas. On the ground floor, Quentin could peer up through the top of his niece's t-shirt. He looked into her hysterical face and when Amanda pulled her last boot off, he caught Willie and Carolyn's wild child coming sideways off the top balcony of the foyer. Carolyn clutched her chest trying to prevent a heart attack.

"Amanda!!" Maggie shot a look at her daughter.

"She tried to kill me!!" Lizzie was screaming. Her make-up smeared and her hair now askew. "She tried to kill me!!" Her feet reached the floor, and her mother came to hold her and comfort her and escort her to the kitchen. Quentin directed his gaze to his youngest child. Amanda was sitting on the top landing under the stain-glass window peering at her father through the railing. She also turned her head up to her mother staring in shock at her. Maggie could only shake her head in slow hysterical disapproving movements.

"What's wrong with you?!" She did not know this girl anymore. "Do you want to go back to Windcliff?" She stooped down to her daughter on the floor with a mixture of fear and love in her face. "You hated it there! The doctors said that coming home was the best thing for you, but you're scaring the hell out of me." Her voice tried to be more sympathetic than scolding. "I can't get you to talk or open up to me, and yet, you're constantly lashing out at your cousins. I know you're the one who tried to poison your brother."

"It was an accident." Amanda held her jacket and boots close to her chest. She looked almost psychotic with her red hair hiding her face. "I just wanted to make him sick."

"Princess…" Quentin came up the staircase quietly and leaned down beside Maggie. "Do you want to go back to Windcliff? Because… I'll send you back if you can't…" Maggie stopped him by placing her hand on his shoulder.

"Are you taking your medicine?" Maggie asked her daughter.

"I ran out of it." Amanda lightly straightened her hair.

"I'll make you a promise." Maggie spoke slowly and lovingly. "If you go back on your medicine and start seeing your therapist again, your father and I will try and find you a nice car."

"Car?" Quentin looked to Maggie and back to his daughter. "Oh, yeah, um… sure." He made a face. "Another teenage driver on our policy…"


	3. Chapter 3

The theme of the recent Michael Keaton movie as a certain dark-night detective played through William Collins's head as he drove his black trans-am onto the estate. A flurry of leaves and debris formed his back draft as he raced over the paved former carriage path from the main gate toward the Old House. In his mind, all he needed was a cave on the property large enough to drive into and a secret passage from his room into it. There were a few caves on the property, but the original bats living in them were not keen on anyone playing bat. Slowing down in the face of the restored ancestral manor, he applied his brakes upon reaching the partial cobblestone drive and pulled in next to his mother's cherry red Jaguar, a gift from Skye Rumson, her first husband. He didn't know much about the man, but then, neither of his parents spoke much of him. Hastening his step up onto the front landing under high-reaching Dorian columns, he pressed forward into the house. The noise attracted the attention of his father, Barnabas Collins, sitting in the parlor reading a novel by Peter Benchley. The true scion of the estate, the silver-haired master lifted his goatee from his chest and glanced across to his son.

"Hey dad…" William continued to the kitchen in back.

"William, my son, could you come and…" He looked up to the empty room. "Straight to his mother…"

Prodding the chops for her family dinner, Angelique Collins turned and saw her son head straight for the refrigerator. In her opinion, he was a good-looking young man with the stature and proud bearing of his father, but her own features and spirit of living. Joshua and Naomi Collins would have been proud of him, but he would have starved in the Eighteenth Century without modern conveniences. A drumstick in his teeth, a few cold Brussels spouts and a wedge of Swiss cheese, he took a bottle of water from the door of the fridge and looked up with an earnest but hungry look to his mother.

"You have room for dinner after that crab plate?"

"How do you do about that?" For years, she had somehow predicted every thing he had ever done without him telling her.

"I'm a witch…" Angelique teased her son. "I see all and know all." She giggled with a warm motherly grin and turned back to her dinner cooking on the gas stove. "Darling," She coaxed him closer to her. "Before you head off back to school, could you do something nice for Amanda? She's been so down since you left."

"No…" The young man pleaded. "Mom, she creeps me out. She's had this weird thing for me since we were kids just because I was nice to her."

"She likes being around you." Mother and son stood in the middle of the kitchen between the sink and the preparation counter.

"Can't you pawn her off on Sara?" William found a substitute.

"Your sister doesn't return from Martinique until Monday." Angelique looked her grown son up and down. "Sweetheart, Amanda needs you sometimes. I know she has feelings for you, but… can't you spend some time with her? She always behaves so well after being with you."

"That's because the last time she thought I had purposed to her." William shrank away taking a bite of the cheese. "It took me weeks to explain things to Paula. She doesn't have a crazy cousin like I do."

"You haven't seen Paula in months!" Angelique rechecked her chops and vegetables before stirring her mashed potatoes. "Look, Amanda needs someone. She needs to feel connected to someone…."

"Mom…" William refused again. "She once climbed into my bed with me! I was grossed out for weeks! I was needing therapy!"

"William…" Angelique glared at her son. "She needs you! She's going to get worse if you don't stop avoiding her. I know this has been a bad experience for you, but… you are so good for her."

"I've got to get ready to return to school." William would have nothing to do with his red-haired cousin. He tossed his chicken bone into the trash, popped the Brussels sprout into his mouth and marched past his mother to repack his duffel bag to head back to school on time. Angelique could only gasp defeatedly trying to accept his position and yet comply with Maggie's request that William actually say goodbye to Amanda before leaving her again. She heard the front door sounding and started out to respond to it. Having placed his book aside, Barnabas stroked his house jacket smooth and met his wife en route to answer the door.

"Yes?"

"Hello…" She was a very lovely woman of indiscernible age. Blonde and fair, her long overcoat barely obscured her regal blue sweater shaping her wonderful figure and long white pleated skirt. "I'm Cheryl Harridge. I'm a close personal friend of your son." She lightly wafted her long blonde hair back.

"I didn't know William was dating again." Barnabas looked with intrigue to Angelique.

"He never told me."

"No, we're not dating…" Their guest tried to clarify. "I'm more of his… mentor." She chose her words carefully. Angelique felt a wave of concern about that college her son was attending.

"Would you like to enter?" Barnabas tried to be the gracious host.

"Thank you." Cheryl Harridge glided forward with a regal and intimidating bearing. Barnabas offered her a sherry and she accepted. Angelique's motherly instincts vaulted over her psychic senses and started screaming to her from her subconscious.

"Let me cut to the chase and avoid any further confusion," Harridge made herself comfortable in the Queen Anne chair across from Angelique. "After all, for a former vampire and a retired witch, you should understand the basic tenets of magic."

Barnabas and Angelique exchanged worried looks.

"Who are you?" Angelique had barely known this woman and already did not like her.

"Your son is the reincarnation of my son who I lost several years ago." Cheryl sipped her sherry. "And I want him back. I mean you have one daughter. What's one son?"

"He's my son!" Angelique recoiled from this proposal.

"I've know a few Harridges…" Barnabas dryly recalled.

"Possibly…" Cheryl lightly lifted her head. "My descendants…." She coyly swirled the sherry in her glass. "I was calling spirits long before you were sealed in that coffin, Mr. Collins…." She looked toward Angelique. "Or you were running through the wharfs of Collinsport, Mrs. Bouchard… or should I say, Mrs. DuVal." She shined with a royal presence. "What did Clara DuPres call you? A horrible guttersnipe? I find it such an odd coincidence that you, the Collins and the DuPres had such entwined destinies." She sipped her sherry while observing their reactions.

"Just what do you want from us?" Angelique would rather forget the horrible events of a past she was not proud of.

"Why just the complete and total return of my son." Harridge grinned mysteriously. "Nothing more…."

"Get out of my house!" Angelique stood up to her.

"I was afraid you'd do this the hard way." Cheryl waved her free hand and knocked Angelique back into her chair. Barnabas collapsed to his feet choking and watched in pain as Cheryl Harridge set her drink aside and paced around the room eyeing her surroundings. Angelique fought to try and remove herself from her seat. Her husband could barely move from where he landed.

"William, darling…" Cheryl looked around the house for her long lost child.

"Mom?" William started down the stairs and looked upon her. She beamed ear to ear up to him.

"William!" Angelique screamed. "Stay upstairs!!"

Barnabas lurched himself to his feet trying to reach this sorceress invading his home but was felled by a mere gesture by the sorceress in his home. He landed with a cruel crunch to his back and looked to his wife. She freed one arm and waved it at her son.

"William, run away!" She ordered him.

"What's going on?" He recognized his mother briefly.

"William, please…" Angelique was pleading for his safety. "Josette, help me!!"

"Don't you think I'd have taken care of a few pesky ghosts?" Harridge spoke to Angelique and lightly turned her head to the young man. "William, sweetheart… It's time to look for your brothers and sisters..."

"Mom…" William looked at her and saw another person before him.

"William!!" Her eyes full of tears, Angelique fought franticly to free herself from the chair. "Don't let her in your head!! She's hypnotizing you!!"

"William, this is your father talking to you!!" Barnabas had reared himself up on his cane, but as the sunlight through the front windows touched him, he found himself smoking from its purifying touch. Those old forgotten urges were returning, the sunlight was turning him to ash and turning him into a two-hundred year old desiccated husk. He recoiled from the realization that whatever power had saved him all these years had been repealed; he was a vampire once more, and a dying one at that. A hollow screaming shriek of pain came from his deteriorating body and he fell to his feet once more looking toward his wife. His gasping voice could cough one barely cognizant name, "Angelique…."

"No!!" Tears streaming from her eyes, Angelique realized she was losing her family all at once. She had to break this woman's power!

"Take my hand, sweetheart…." Harridge reached to William Collins with a loving honeyed voice, and one warning gaze toward the weakened witch under her thrall. She forced one faint grin and embraced her son closely and felt him hugging her back. Her heart trembling, her eyes full of tears, Angelique was losing it. Her voice screamed to the heavens as her husband in his destabilized condition continued dragging himself by his cane trying to save his son. He made one rasping noise from the lowest bowels of his throat and reached to his son but found empty air before him.

"William!!" Angelique felt herself vaulted to the floor without warning and whiled around to see her son but he was gone. Cheryl Harridge had vanished with him. Her head trembling in shock, her mouth gasping in disbelief, she realized her heart had been lurched from her body. A twinge of memory turned her to her husband and she rolled over to him, pulling him close and looking into his brown eyes. He was looking more and more like the graying yet silver-haired father he was supposed to be than the dying vampire he might have once been. The fangs that had returned were gone, the old urges were removed one again and he was once again slowly gaining his breath once more. Angelique pulled him close to comfort him and hopefully gain some support from him as well as give him some in return.

"She took our son…." Angelique cried. "She took our son away…." Her heart filled with anguish as she comforted her husband.


	4. Chapter 4

4

It was often said that one of the most powerful bonds in the universe was that of a mother's love for her children. Angelique realized that now. She would have given her life for either her son or daughter, and she had definitely tried… and failed. Whoever this woman calling herself Cheryl Harridge was, she was much more powerful than even her. She had felt her power, and had been humbled by it, even drained by it. The experience had shattered her confidence as a former witch who had once nearly destroyed the Collins family she had once sworn to destroy, but now she had an oath to protect it, but how could she reach those goals when the bonds of motherhood to her children had been stripped from her soul?

"I call upon the watchtowers of Earth…" She sat huddled before the blazing fire in the Old House fireplace trying to call upon the pagan gods of old. She did not dare call upon her former dark masters, not even in a matter that tore into her soul. Tears steaming down her face, her heart breaking within her breast and even her hands shaking from her ordeal, she wanted her son back! Was he still alive? Where was he? She wanted him back!

"Grant me sight beyond sight…" Her wavering voice reached beyond infinity and the other levels of existence. "Grant me the power over my enemies and the protection of mother earth. I call upon the watchtowers…" She repeated her spell over and over. Barnabas had tried to tug her away from her ritual, but she had resisted him for the sake of her son. He could only watch with the love and concern of the devoted husband he had become for the wife he had grown to love and trust, and yet, worry that she was once more sliding back into the former arts she had promised to relinquish so many years before as his wife and the mother of his children. A noise distracted the Collins patriarch from the welfare and ensuing grief for his wife, and the former vampire turned aloft and looked toward the foyer of the house to glance upon Quentin Collins standing at the bottom landing of the staircase. Garbed in his usual sweater and khakis, his look was confused and concerned as he looked to Angelique trying to summon a spell then back to Barnabas.

"You didn't give me any details over the phone." Quentin looked round. "What happened exactly?"

"Some…" Barnabas looked to Angelique with worried concern. "Woman arrived here claiming that William was her son…."

"What?!"

"I call upon the watchtowers of Earth…" Behind them, Angelique cried and wept as she rocked back and forth on her legs on the floor trying to summon her spell.

"She was powerful, Quentin." Barnabas slowly began reaching to comfort his wife in her spell, but at the last minute held back. "More powerful than anyone we've even faced." He turned away with a Shakespearean luster as if he were reciting to an unseen audience. "For a brief few seconds, I was that creature I once was… and Angelique was powerless to help me or stop her from claiming William."

"We must call the authorities then…."

"Grant me the power over my enemies and the protection of mother earth. I call upon…." On the floor, Angelique crossed herself with a protection spell and continued invocating through her tears and broken heart.

"I don't think we can do that this time." Barnabas turned to Quentin. "Not without revealing the people we once were or… this woman's nature…" He paused with the concerned grief of a father missing a son. "I know not what we are facing. If only Stokes were still with us…"

"Well, surely Angelique knows of spells that…." He heard a whistling through the house. The sunlight outside dimmed and the clouds started rolling in from over the ocean. Angelique gasped as she felt a touch on her shoulder. The wind outside the Old House was accelerating and the trees bent toward the presence of the restored ancestral manor. A deep breath of air gasped over the fireplace and nearly snuffed the burning blaze. Barnabas feared whatever force his wife had conjured and noticed the front doors of the flying open from the strong gale outside. As Angelique gasped before the power she had tapped, her husband and his cousin pushed against the air whistling and blowing throw the house and effortlessly sealed the house once more. They were being visited once more.

"Of my children far and abroad…" A voice echoed with the merit of a warrior. "I will always return pon Midgard when my children call upon me." A male presence now stood over Angelique as Barnabas and Quentin reacted. At first, they were not upon guests arriving without warning, but Angelique had leapt to her feet and embraced him dearly. Barnabas reacted with stunned silence; Quentin stood as a mute witness to these events unfolding.

"I need your help once again…" The former witch clung to her former benefactor for support and stepped back trying to dry her tears. "As you confessed to be my ancestor, you must protect my son who is descended from you as I was. He has been taken from me and I am powerless before his abductor."

"I am sworn to protect my children and their children from immortal threats…." The figure was over six feet tall with long thick blonde locks and a Viking beard; garbed in the arraignment of a humble man... blue jeans, red t-shirt and brown leather jacket over a massive muscle-toned frame, his steely blue eyes peered upon Angelique with noble and honorable intent. "But by Gimle's words, I am forbidden to invest in mortal affairs. You must confront the sorceress yourself."

"You have to return my son to me!" Angelique ordered him.

"Do not tempt my patience, daughter of my children." The figure warned her with the diction of a parent. "My patience is as infinite as my mother, but even a former god's wrath can be tested!"

"Angelique…" Barnabas broke his stunned silence. "Do you know this… presence?" Angelique seemingly realized her husband's existence. Quentin stood by mute to these events.

"His name is Sigurd Jordson…" Angelique wafted defiantly and partially through the room. "He was worshipped as the god Thor by the Vikings over a thousand years ago. He rescued me when I was on the Titanic and told me I was descended from his children."

"Ah, yes, I forgot she was on the Titanic…." Quentin noticed the sherry and poured himself a glass. He had briefly visited Collinwood in the days of Prohibition when Angelique told him all about it.

"If I had not turned Angelique from her dark masters…" Thor turned comparing his frame to the Collinwood patriarch. "You might still be sleeping in the pinewood box, descendant of Priam." The former god paced a bit and admired a piece of bric-a-brac.

"Just who was that woman?" Angelique fretted and tried to determine what she was up against. "Why does she want my son? Why does she think he is her son?" Her hand reached to her heart. Thor gasped a moment pulling his hand over his beard, groaned under his breath and looked into the flames ebbing in the fireplace. He glanced to Barnabas then over to Quentin before turning to lean on the mantelpiece under the portrait.

"Her true existence was as Guinevere Alexandra De Constantine Von Altebar…" His mind's eye turned to the past. "A powerful sorceress who acquired her skills from her Gaulic mentors, she claimed to be the living reincarnation of the Lady Guinevere… without merit of course…" He rolled his eyes. "In the Twelfth Century of your calendar, the Holy Roman Church once relied on her to protect them from evil, but their later masters turned against her and accused her of witchcraft… of being in liege with dark entities much like you once did, daughter of my children. They burned her alive pon the grounds of her Bavarian home, and scattered her children upon the world to never know their heritage. She'd have remained trapped between the levels of existence had the Nazis not restored her former home and released her essence. She's been restoring her power and looking for her children ever since." Thor turned toward Angelique. "Your son shares the soul of her first born; with her children restored she will have her revenge on the descendants of those who cast flame upon her."

"Can you face her on my behalf?" Angelique's voice echoed within a whisper.

"I would stand ground against any immortal to raise hand against you, Angelique…" Thor brushed her tears away with his thumb and fingers gracefully to her tender white features. "But Von Altebar is still a mortal if not powerful woman. Your Christian lord forbids me from laying harm against another mortal." He looked upon her as the father she had never known. "You must face her… yourself with the gifts my mother Jord hath given you."

"But Angelique hasn't used her witchcraft in years." Barnabas stepped toward the former thunder-god. "She's… out of practice. I won't allow her to put herself in danger."

"A parent's greatest gift to their child is the laying down of their life." Thor looked to him then back to Angelique. "I told her years ago that she would be sorely tested for her past sins, just as the once mortal son of Zeus was tested for his avarice…."

With that, Angelique gasped deeply and lightly fell into the arms of her husband. Her head on his shoulder, she grieved deeply and started bemoaning the absence of her son. Barnabas tried to console her with every breadth of his will, but her heart was breaking too far for him to comprehend.

"So…" Quentin sipped his sherry. "What's Hercules doing these days anyway?" The former thunder god made an annoyed look and peered back with derision to the former scoundrel.


	5. Chapter 5

5

The former Norse god had blinked out as covertly as he arrived. Realizing her only course of action, Angelique marched through the house grabbing ingredients from her box of medical herbs, once more reclaiming her old spell book from a trunk in the attic and then taking a brief moment to halt her dinner from burning in the stove. The last time Barnabas had seen the determined look upon her face, he was betrothed to the Josette DuPres and Angelique had transformed her father into a cat to delay the wedding. Back then, he at least knew who the enemy was. Today, he was racing toward Angelique trying to stop her or at least help her.

"Angelique…" Barnabas pleaded with his wife. "Let me help you in this endeavor."

"Barnabas…" She kissed him then finished melting the empty sherry cup Harridge had handled into a gemstone impression in an iron mold in the fireplace. "I love you very much, but I cannot save our son if you are there for her to distract me." Tears ran down her face as she kissed and held her face to his. "I must be able to face her full force without distractions."

"I found it." Quentin sat nearby holding a small diary he had held on to for several years. It was a book of spells he had started with a man named Evan Handley, a figure he now counted as one of his worst enemies. "If this works, you should be able to teleport wherever she does by riding her spell and using the glass to home in on her."

"Providing she handled it long enough to leave her essence on it." Angelique took Quentin's book and read it. "Old Nicholas stole this spell from Jebez Hawkes, much like much of his tricks." She recalled Evan by his former identity, Nicholas Blair, a member of the same dark cult that had sired her. She picked through her ingredients and wrapped them into a rag made from hemp along with the small gem made from the melted glass. Clutching it in her fingers, she turned toward the fireplace and extended her arm to the flames.

"By Hagrid's Eye and the shores of Olympus…" She replaced the demonic names in the incantation with beings of white magic influence. "Allow this petty sorceress to breach the veil of reality and traverse Mother Earth, ancestor of us all…" Her voice quivered out of her breaking heart. "By Gandalf's wing and the feathers of Icarus, place my step in the shadow of my enemy and guide me through the eye of Zurvan." The pouch began glowing and smoking as the gem burned through the pouch with a puff of smoke. Angelique quickly caught it before it hit the floor and held it up to her eye. It glimmered brightly a second, but when she started pointing it south, it began glowing even more brightly.

"It's found her." Quentin stated the obvious.

"Barnabas…" Angelique looked to her husband. "If I don't return…"

"You will return." He pulled her close and closed his lips over hers. Quentin became the odd man out as he watched their display of affection and cleared his throat. Looking again, he watched the former vampire and retired witched gaze intently one last moment as she began vanishing. Gradually becoming transparent, she continued becoming invisible until she was gone altogether. Barnabas exhaled with worried overtones as Quentin grasped his shoulder for assurance.

For Angelique, she had watched two images before her eyes overlapping and changing. Her visage of her husband had faded away as the image of a tree-lined neighborhood overwhelmed it. The walls turned to houses and trees, the ceiling faded away to sky and the floor beneath her turned to asphalt. Gradually other details came to her senses, a stop sign by her right side, the scent of the ocean in the air and the shrill of police sirens mired with the flashing red and blue lights of police cars and a fire engine just five houses up the street. Was this another part of Collinsport? Where was she? Was she too late? Stepping up on to the sidewalk, she hastened her step up the street to the police disturbance. Neighbors were at the boundaries of the picturesque two-story home. The name Leery was painted on the mailbox, police officers were wandering in and out of the home hanging open and almost twenty bystanders came from their homes and watched and waited for news from behind bushes, cars and trees. Angelique's steps stopped a few feet from a mother and her young daughter. The adorable brunette pixie immediately noticed her.

"Dawson vanished." The impossibly cute brown-eyed girl looked up to Angelique.

"Joey, hush…" Mother scolded her daughter. She looked back to Angelique then back to the police involvement.

"What happened?"

"Their son vanished from the back yard." Bess Potter pulled her daughter away to her right side. "My daughter played with him. Are you new to Cape Side?"

"Yes, I'm afraid I am." Angelique felt the same pangs that Dawson's screaming mother had. "Did anyone see what happened?"

"I don't know." Bess noticed her daughter's infatuated fascination for the strange woman with them. "Do you live around here, Mrs…"

"Collins…" The former witch identified herself. "Angelique Collins. I'm just sort of passing through…." Bess was looking at her suspiciously as if she was suspecting something odd about her. She wondered if this woman could have taken Dawson and was returning to the scene of the crime.

"Uh, if you'll excuse us…" Bess pulled her daughter along with her.

"Yes, of course…" Angelique responded while she remained interested. Her voice lowered. "I'm too late. Way too late…." She held the gem up and started aiming it southward and around her. It was not until she directed it northward that it started glowing once more. Maybe not so north after all, a bit more east perhaps… It started glowing brighter…

"On your heels…" She started walking up the street and fading away once more. As she vanished, young Pacey Witter stopped watching the police and noticed the vanishing woman before his house. For Angelique, she merely exchanged one affluent Massachusetts neighborhood for one middle class Detroit suburb. Not as many trees this time, her rich azure eyes accustomed to her new surroundings and her feet forced themselves forward. Local youth Kyle Brady suddenly noticed her sudden appearance and reacted by dropping his action figures.

"Dad, there's a witch on our street!!"

Angelique reacted to his response.

"Kyle, have been dipping into your brother's stash?!" Tommy Brady screamed out to his idiot kid.

Ignoring aspersions and frenetic parents, Angelique looked for the police cars and for the sounds of distress. She aimed the gem clenched in her fist determinedly up the street and the other way, the intensity of it glowing between her fingers and guiding her to one house on the block, a wood frame-two story with a yard full of kid's toys. Determined and unwavering, she hastened to charge the house then hesitantly stopped herself from barging in. She could not let her feelings override her wisdom. She had to be prepared. A gasp of air for luck, she tapped the brass knocker against the door and crossed herself for luck. Within a few minutes, the lady of the house came to the door.

"Yes…" A tall auburn-haired woman answered the door. Angelique looked upon her for a second and made eye contact, reading this woman's life history within seconds through sheer clairvoyance.

"Cate…" She pretended to know her. "Catey Eagan, a long time it has been." She hugged her. "It has been such a long time." Her witchcraft may have been out of practice, but her mental discipline was as strong as ever. Pretending to be an old friend from this woman's past enabled her to gain entry to the house ahead of her son's abductor.

"Oh, yes, of course…" Cate became gracious and welcomed this strange woman into her home. "But it's Cate Hennessey now. I'm married, got a few kids too." She gestured Angelique to sit at the sofa. The wily witch looked over the home strewn with toys and looked for children. "So how are you doing?"

"Well," Angelique continued the charade. "I was down in Pensacola and ran into your parents again." She made up events from the details borrowed from Cate's memories. "She told me about you and your sister and kids. How many did she say you had again?" She pretended to be forgetful.

"Three…" Cate continued. "Bridget is eight, Kerry is seven and Rory is going on five." Cate sighed feeling blessed with her children. "Paul is working a lot on the road, but… I'm holding up."

"Your parents don't care for Paul much, do they?" Angelique forced an amused grin. "Is there anything I can do to help you?"

"I have to be honest." Cate stopped her. She looked upon the older woman in the fanciful blouse and long skirt. "But I don't remember you. Where do we know each other?"

"Cate," Angelique was not prepared for honesty and turned to her old tricks. "I've been friends of your family since we lived on Delaware Street. I'm Angelique Bouchard-Collins. I used to baby-sit you and your sister when you were kids. How is Maggie by the way?" She spoke of Maggie Eagan, Cate's sister; not the Maggie Collins back at Collinwood.

"Oh! Mrs. Collins!!" Cate reflected on a vague memory of a Mrs. Collins who had lived next door to her childhood home. She had not seen her in years and even believed she had passed away, but she now realized she had to be mistaken. "Of course I recall you! So, what are you doing here in Detroit?"

"Well, to see if you need any help, sweetheart." Angelique started believing she really did know this family. "Is there anything I can do to help you?"

"Uh, well…" Cate looked around. "I should be forcing Rory into a bath if you could take care of Bridget and Kerry. If it's not too much trouble."

"You take care of that darling little boy…" Angelique rose and started gathering toys. "Is there anything in particular your kids eat for dinner?"

"Pizza and hamburgers."

"I think I can manage something even their little tummies would like." Angelique beamed to be around little children once more. Cate had whirled around and up the front staircase grateful for help from old family friends. As soon as her foot reached the second landing, Angelique reached into a pocket of her skirt and removed a pouch of herbs and spice with a sprig of holly. It was a protection device, a familiar for enchanting homes taken from old Slavic shamans in the Ural Mountains.

"Domovoy shadows and faerie wings…" She started enchanting on protective spirits. "I enchant these walls and call upon the protectors of home and hearth. I bar this edifice from…"

"What are you doing?" A young blonde girl popped up beside her.

"Oh!!" Angelique jumped back surprised. "I'm, uh, well… who are you, sweetheart?"

"I'm Bridget Erin Hennessy." The girl looked suspiciously upon her. "I'm eight years old."

"Would you like to do some magic, darling?" Angelique shined upon her.

"I love magic!"

"I knew you would…" Angelique took her pouched and placed it into the girls hand. "Just repeat after me and…" She watched in shock as the young pixie opened her pouch and emptied it on to the carpet. When she tried to stop her, Bridget waved her hand in her face and stopped her. With her youthful gesture, Angelique felt herself flung backward, landing on her chest in the Hennessey's kitchen linoleum. Gasping in pain, she lifted her head up and pulled her hair out of her face.

"I'm warning you, Angelique…" Eight-year-old Bridget Hennessy's eyes lit up as she wielded a spell from her fourth-grade hands. She spoke perfect diction and proper alliteration. "I'll kill you if you don't stop interfering with me! No one is keeping my children from me."

"She was after the daughter the whole time..." Angelique realized and gasped for air. "Your children died several centuries ago!"

"They will always be my children." Young Bridget passed her hand over the sofa to levitate it and pushed it forward with her other hand. Angelique caught it with another spell, her personal telekinesis catching it aloft in the air and holding it there as she lifted herself to her feet. When she looked again after returning it back to the floor, young Bridget had dashed from the house and out the front door. She dashed after her, stopping at the front door to see the beautiful blonde girl hastening for the safety of Cheryl Harridge at the curb. The misguided sorceress scooped up the young girl and kissed and hugged her. Glaring at the clever woman to hide her essence in the child, Angelique watched as Cheryl waved her hand again, swinging the Hennessy front door shut from afar and knocking her unconscious to the floor.


	6. Chapter 6

6

"Good afternoon, San Francisco…" Bay Area TV Reporter Jan Esposito spoke to the TV cameras in one of the residential areas of the Golden Gate Bridge. "We're reporting from 3563 Miranda Drive where eight-year-old Raven Baxter vanished from her home just a few minutes ago. Police are still combing the neighborhood in search of the girl and interviewing her many friends for any clue to her whereabouts. Since the girl is the daughter of prominent area chef Victor Baxter, the police have not ruled out a possible kidnapping…" On-lookers and curiosity-seekers watched along the soloing neighborhood. Lined with nearly identical adobe and stucco homes, the steep road had been cordoned off with only police and detectives slipping through the lines. A formerly retired witch, tired and exhausted, came up the rear of the by-standers and centered up the street. Tonya Baxter was screaming and swatting at the police to find her daughter. Victor Baxter screamed at the detectives for insinuating he had done something to his daughter. He was away working at the Chateau Maison restaurant where he worked, but as the police pointed out, they still had to examine the possibility.

"I'm too late." Angelique cursed herself once more and dropped into self-pity. "Too late again." She wondered about just where her son and these children were vanishing. Neither her son nor young Dawson Leery was near Cheryl when she vanished with Bridget Hennessy. They had to be somewhere. Standing amongst the neighbors waiting to get into their homes and the children standing by their protective parents, she poked her hand into the pocket of her skirt for the gem and started to move away as nonchalantly as possible. As she started heading down the hill, her clairvoyance detected something from around her. There was a young girl sitting on the wood foundation of a base around one of the trees that lined the street. Sitting and eating an ice cream cone, she was possibly about eight years old with long red hair, dressed in a sleeveless white shirt with colorful long pants. She could have been a friend of the missing Raven Baxter, or she was just one of several children who lived near the street. When Angelique passed her, the girl stopped licking her chocolate ice cream cone and lifted her gaze to the former witch. Her grin was unnatural, her look practically possessed.

"Give up, Angelique, you can't win." She looked up to the Collins matriarch. "I have half my children back and you haven't the power to stop me. Four left to go, and you can't do a thing to even slow me down. Go home while you still can."

"As long as I have a breath in my body," The enchantress from Martinique stared upon the child. "I will fight you for the sake of my son." As she looked upon the girl, her demeanor changed and became more effervescent. The child's true nature returned to push away the presence once within her.

"Hi, I'm Chelsea Daniels!" She grinned without a care in the world. "Are you one of Raven's friends too?"

"I'd like to be…" Angelique strolled Chelsea's hair for the moment with a motherly gesture and turned away palming the gem in her hand. While she looked upon it, it didn't glow, but as she lifted it up to her eyes, it shimmered and lit up with intensity. Was it reacting to young Chelsea, or beyond her? She had to be sure. When she turned past Chelsea, it continued staying lit. Cheryl Harridge was somewhere south of San Francisco, but how far south this time? Monterey? Santa Barbara? The only way to find out was to once again subject her ability to teleport and let it deposit her in the steps of that sorceress once more. One of the popular Bay City trolleys rolled up past her and she stepped up on to it with a light hop. When the gentlemen next to her turned round to introduce himself, the lovely blonde beauty he had just seen stepping on the street car had vanished.

Beyond the city, far beyond the hills of around San Francisco Bay, the steps of the woman who once nearly meant the destruction of Collinwood were now moving through the sunny corridors of a school somewhere in sunny Southern California. Angelique's blue azure eyes looked up and briefly analyzed the clutching tiger mascot of Hillridge Grammar School. This was not a good place to be. This school had to have over eight hundred kids in this school, but which of them had been the son or daughter of an ousted sorceress now returned from the grave? It could also be beneficial for Angelique. Harridge could not possibly abduct a child surrounded by so many witnesses.

Her heels echoing over the hard floor of the school, Angelique strided past five foot high school lockers and exterior classroom walls decorated by the artwork of children. She turned and looked within one of the restrooms, her natural and mystical senses perceiving all sorts of stimuli. There was the faint taste of white glue in the air, the scent of broken crayons and the distant whispers of kids doing lessons, sometimes broken by the shrill scream of a young brat or problem child screaming for attention. The school janitor pressed on past her pushing a dust mop without looking at her; his lot in life defined by cleaning the trash and crumbs of several dozen crumb-snatchers and juvenile delinquents. At the end of the hall, Angelique stepped through an arch. An arrow on the wall pointed to the cafeteria down to her left, the other arrow pointed upstairs to the fourth and fifth grade classrooms. Her ears detected a sound and she turned back to the cafeteria behind her and the woman leading a five-year-old child by the hand.

"… And chocolate and unicorns and…." Cheryl spoke to a young lady as she and Angelique locked eyes on each other. "And one really stupid witch who never listens to the advice I give her."

"Oh, I've got advice for you too." Angelique stood far removed from her East Coast home. "If I can't stop you, I'll whip up the ancestors of every child you have abducted. Not even you could battle that many angry ghosts."

"Oh, Angelique…" Cheryl lifted up the young girl into her arms and kissed her cheek. "I have nothing to fear from _my_ ancestors."

"You know of whom I'm speaking."

"Angelique, Angelique…" The wily sorceress said her name with her French accent stressing her rival's name. "I have nothing to fear from you. Play with your little spells. Do what you will. I have eluded you over and over. You can't stop me. You can't even hurt me." She embraced five-year-old Lizzie McGuire even tighter and kissed her face. "I can, however, hurt you very much."

Before she could respond, Angelique was struck from behind by the entranced janitor. The end of the dust mop had nearly struck her upside the back of the head, but she had to throw herself out of the way to avoid the attack. She hurled a pouch of powder and herbs into his face to tranquilize him and he keeled backward to the floor into a mystical sleep. The determined enchantress turned back to face Harridge now standing alone, a white cape and cloaked wrapped round her head and shoulders, her hands posed defiantly to her bodice. She made a face of hostile annoyance or maybe something else. Her frame trembled a bit. Angelique wondered if she was somehow hurting her after all. One hand to her abdomen, Harridge's right hand drifted covertly under her cape as she advanced Angelique.

"Angelique, I've destroyed witches more experienced than you! I'm giving you one more chance to stop meddling in my affairs." She tensed over unable to ignore the piercing pain jolting through her body. She clutched her abdomen and lowered her voice secretly speaking to someone else. "William, why are you fighting me like this?!" She spoke to his soul returned to her womb ready to be reborn. Angelique's eyes had widened in shock to realize the ugly truth.

"What did you do to my son?!"

"He's not your son!!" Cheryl hissed and stirred her arms before her and whipped up a storm of poltergeist activity with school lockers flying open and every object within them propelling themselves at her nemesis. Amidst the debris of flying scissors, strewn lunchboxes, flying crayons and flapping workbooks were a few school spirits once content to hide from the living but now whipped up against the witch named Angelique Bouchard-Collins. The ghost of a former teacher tossed Angelique up into the air as a few younger spirits tried ripping her apart. A Native American phantom from an ancient scout buried under the foundation screamed a war cry and swung his tomahawk at her head. Cheryl Harridge watched unaffected as Angelique deflected it with an invocation. Turning away from the conflagration, she stepped away from the fracas to compose herself, her hands held flat to her lower abdomen, and walked unseen from the school unaffected and undisturbed by the teachers and staff racing past her.

"William, sweetheart…" She was seemingly talking to herself. "If you cannot behave yourself, we will never find your brother and sisters. Do not distract me again!" A gesture tossed the doors open for her to depart from the school. Once her foot touched the outside sidewalk, the poltergeist activity behind her stopped. Lying at the bottom of the stairway, Angelique groaned and started lifting herself up from her wounds and injuries. With parts of her clipped hair falling off her head, her body wracked with injuries and her clothing torn and rend through by the attack of the debris, she watched the sorrowful ghosts vanishing back into the masonry and lockers and the crowd of distracted young students and disgusted teachers and staff looking down upon her prostrate body.

"Hey…" Five-year-old David Gordon looked among his classmates for his best friend. "Where's Lizzie?"


	7. Chapter 7

7

"Barnabas, darling…" Angelique spoke on a New York City pay phone not far from a Catholic school called St. Finnegan in a Queens neighborhood. "I'm sorry I haven't called, but…" She paused thinking of a lie. "You won't believe what I've been through."

"Angelique," Barnabas stood in the main hall at Collinwood with Quentin standing by him. Carolyn's teenage daughter had raced by screaming at her brother as Willie Loomis rolled his eyes and went to keep them from killing each other. Eying the conflagration down the main hall near the entrance to the dining room, Barnabas looked to Quentin a second then spoke once more. "You've been gone for weeks, and I had to…"

"Weeks!" Angelique recoiled at the fact. She was not aware how much time was passing every time she teleported. Harridge must not have been returning back to Earth until she latched on to her next child, and in the meantime, she was dragging Angelique a few minutes behind her. The realization started tearing at her soul.

"William's school called asking about him." Barnabas related the rest of the news. "I told them that he was sick and would be back as soon as possible. Carolyn and Maggie have been coming down to the Old House looking for you and trying to help. I can't hold them off much longer, and Sara came home asking questions. I'm running out of excuses."

"Barnabas…" Angelique's eyes filled with tears realizing the futile task she was trying. "I can't return home just yet. I'm…. so close. I know William is trying to return me. I know he is. This chase can't continue much longer."

"Angelique…" Quentin took the phone. "I saw you in the background of a news broadcast about a girl missing in San Francisco. I had to convince Maggie you were someone else. Can you get back there? Back in the Fifties when I lived there, I dated a sorceress or witch named Penelope Halliwell. She might be able to help."

"I know her grand-daughters very well." Angelique recalled the three girls. "But I can't stray from the path. I'm watching…" The bell at St. Finnegan's rang and hordes of kids came running out racing for home along the street and homes. She watched closely and eyed the children closely. "Quentin, tell Barnabas I'll be back and that I love him. I got to go." She hung up the phone and watched as eight-year-old Lily Finnerty pranced out in her school uniform of red and blue amongst the sea of similarly dressed kids. She had long red hair a bit brighter than Amanda's and much longer than Chelsea in San Francisco. Beaming and effervescent, the young girl was a little darling. The woman who collected her was not Cheryl Harridge wanting to abduct her, but her real mother, Claudia Finnerty, a temporary stay at home mother with a boy named Jimmy in her other hand. Claudia listened to her girl's rambling and confusing tale of grammar school life from Lily's lips as they walked the short block to their townhouse down the block. Bored and silent, seven-year-old Jimmy looked behind them to Angelique following them and indiscreetly wiped his nose. Even as Lily talked of bossy nuns and grammar school gossip, Claudia led her children up the front stoop of their home and into the house. Standing guard, the witch from Collinsport stood at the exterior fence of the Finnerty yard and tried not to be suspicious. A second after entering the house, Jimmy came running out giggling and laughing back up the street for the basketball courts, his mood having changed. That did not seem right. Angelique didn't think about it. She dashed upon the porch and charged inside just as Claudia fell to the floor from a mystically induced trance. Beyond her, Cheryl Harridge stood by Lily at her side.

"Angelique…" The wily sorceress knelt to Lily's height and stroked her hair back maternally. She looked back to her nemesis. "I was actually starting to worry about you. What kept you?!"

"I came for my son." The witch in her was no longer holding back. "And this time I come armed." She shattered a small glass bottle to the floor whose spilling vapors quickly engulfed the room. In its mystical smoke were the shades of angry Celtic warriors and chieftains; they were the shades of Lily's ancestors from the days of Eire. A clash of arms and rattling armor hung from their bony and cadaverous bodies. They filled the living room with an ominous presence emanating from them. Swords rose, ethereal groans and grunts from spectral whiskers stood ready to protect their modern heirs. Waiting to stand behind them, Raven's African ancestors, Dawson's Viking progenitors, Lizzie's Saxon relations from centuries prior…. Young Lily clung to Harridge afraid, but the deceitful sorceress stood her ground.

"Angelique, please…" She chuckled a bit. "You think you're the first to try that!" She parted her lips and took a deep breath, the vapors and smoke pouring and descending into her lungs and body. What had once filled the room had poured into a quickly vanishing pillar of energy vanishing into her very gullet. Without that spectral threshold, there would be no ghosts on the Earthly plane to do damage to her. She cleared her throat, raised her left eyebrow amusingly intrigued and stepped away from Claudia Finnerty on the floor, ready to claim her daughter.

"Lily, darling…" Cheryl whispered into the tiny redhead's ear. "This bad lady says you're not my daughter. What do you want to do to her?"

"Hurt her!!" The eight-year-old pixie scowled her adorable angry face and mastered a small spell from her hand. A wave of her hand and Angelique mystically deflected a picture frame from striking her. She dashed around the Finnerty's furniture and raced at Cheryl tugging the child back further and further, but it was not the girl she wanted. She wanted a piece of that misguided white witch. She grabbed at Cheryl's collar and was pushed off of her, ripping off a piece of her clothing when she was tossed to the floor. Holding Lily close to her and whispering to her, she stroked her had and backed away from the formerly retired witch. When she looked back, Angelique whirled around holding something.

"What have you got there, Angelique?"

"It's my turn to hurt you!" The Collins matriarch pushed a knitting needle through a wax effigy covered in the torn fabric and Cheryl Harridge screamed from the pain tearing through her chest. Lily fell from her arms and crashed to the floor. Another knitting needle from her pocket into the effigy and Harridge screamed again reaching to her back as Lily crawled to her real mother's unconscious body. Removing a pin from her hair, Angelique pierced the eyes of her doll and her son's kidnapper went blind, clawing at her face and waving at the air. Harridge stumbled over a dining room chair and fell to the floor.

"Lily!" She screamed to the child in the room. "The doll! Bring me the doll!"

"No!" Angelique grinned standing over the woman who had brought her so much distress. "Release my son and the other children first!" She looked at eight-year-old Lily coming toward her, her little fists striking her chest and arms and reaching for the doll in her out-stretched arm. Angelique fended her off realizing she was not responsible for her actions. Her attention to the child, she then heard the china hutch behind her shaking and rattling from the wall. It was rending itself through the nails supporting it and getting ready to come down on top of her. Without warning, Lily snatched the wax effigy away from her and ran into the living room with it. Racing after her, Angelique reached after the tiny red-haired child diving under the table in the living room and bolting around the sofa back to the dining room. Once Cheryl Harridge could see again, she hurled another mystical ball of psychokinetic force at the retired witch. Angelique tried to deflect it with another spell, but it struck her to her abdomen, spinning her round and knocking her down to her back. Groaning in pain, she turned her head back and looked up to her son's abductor. When she looked up, she noticed the gem had left her pocket and was flying toward Cheryl who removed it from her. Without that enchanted crystal, there was no following her anywhere!

"Your trail ends here, Angelique Bouchard." Cheryl dropped it down inside the front of her blouse. "You will not be following me this time. You can go home now." She pulled Lily close to her heart.

"Not without my son!" Angelique leapt to her feet and raced across the Finnerty's living room. The sliding doors to the dining room were closing against her, but she just managed to reach ahead and grab young Lily by the arm. Wherever she was going, she was going as well. The sorceress's teleportation spell echoed through Lily and charged with stinging force into Angelique's body. Feeling that foreign mystical energy was a bit more than the retired witch could handle, but she continued holding on even as everything winked out around her. Somewhere in the plane of existence she was passing through, she was ripped asunder and jettisoned into nowhere. Angelique hit solid force again and looked to see a cobblestone street and car headlights coming at her. Strange hands grabbed and pulled her off the ground and on to the sidewalk just as a messenger van shot past her.

"Are you okay?" Native Michael Norwich yanked the mature beauty from the edge of vehicular death. "You got to watch the traffic here, ma'am. Those messengers can be ruthless."

"Traffic…." Angelique was a bit bewildered from her experience as her head tried to come together. She was no longer in New York, but a town with more New England traits. Was she back in Collinsport? No, the traffic was never like this back there. "Excuse me," She turned to her young rescuer. "But I completely blanked out a second. Where am I again?"

"Demonbreun Street in Westbridge… just south of Boston." Norwich was a bit enchanted by her. "Do you need a doctor?"

"Westbridge…" Angelique knew this town. "Time for reinforcements…"


	8. Chapter 8

8

"Sabrina…" Josh looked over to his blonde infatuation. "Your mom's here."

"My mom?" Sabrina wondered a bit confused and turned round to recognize Angelique Bouchard sitting in their college coffeehouse. The blonde sorceress was an old friend of her aunts and the mother of William Collins, a one-time boyfriend. A light giggle and a knowing grin, she placed her coffeepot aside and hurried over to the woman which her father called her godmother. They shared a loving embrace and bond of love.

"So, you're my mother this time?" The Wiccan beauty mused.

"Sabrina, darling…" Angelique shined over the girl. "I can't go into details, but I need help. I'm powerless against this sorceress who has abducted William. You must help me stop her and the other children she has abducted."

"Well," Sabrina looked round to be sure they were not being eavesdropped upon. "How powerful is she?"

"Powerful…" Angelique answered. "But she's still mortal. I was thinking, even with your partial immortality, maybe you could be able to distract her for me to hurt her and save my son."

"What about Aunt Samantha?"

"I lost contact with her after Darren passed away." Angelique recalled another immortal witch who had been her friend. "Sabrina, your aunts are too far away for me right now. You're my last chance. She's going after one last child and I have no way to follow her!"

"Sabrina…" Josh came up behind her. "Is there a problem?"

"Uh…" The entrancingly attractive young Wiccan mugged a bit for a boss and boyfriend. "I kind of have a family emergency. Can I leave early?"

"Of course…" He leaned over and kissed her. "I hope it's nothing bad."

"You could say…" Sabrina looked from Josh to Angelique. "That my stepbrother is in a bit of trouble." She tossed off her apron and hastened with a turn of heel for the door. Leaving Josh with the thought she had a stepbrother, she motioned Angelique ahead of her and up on to Main Street.

"What are you up against?" Sabrina looked to the wily witch.

"Her real name is Guinevere Alexandra De Constantine Von Altebar…" Angelique walked with her side by side down the sidewalk looking for an inconspicuous spot. "But her modern identity is that of a woman claiming to be Cheryl Harridge. Her mastery of sorcery is incredible! She's been collecting the modern day reincarnations of her children…" Angelique stopped to prepare Sabrina. "Placing their souls within her womb to restore to life."

"She never heard of adoption?"

"Sabrina, sweetheart…" Angelique looked over the busy Westbridge Street. "Don't make light of this. This woman has dragged me to hell and back. Now, I don't clam to understand the mystical powers of your family, but your ancestors were Atlantean, far older than hers or mine. You will have the edge. You can fight her far easier by yourself than I ever could."

"I can't locate a person I never met…." Sabrina tugged Angelique into a short alley. "But I can take you to a person you know. You're the one I'm following." A bold wave of her arm and erupting pockets of finite reality burst into smoke around them, exchanged their location with another point in space, this time a grand hall with a high ceiling and collegiate decorations. The school colors hung from banners around them, and the walls were adorned in testaments to its illustrious history. Sabrina recognized it.

"This is the commons of my school. She came after someone I know?" She looked around grateful it was empty. "Who is she after?" She looked to her mentor. Angelique started to answer but held back. Her voice drew silent at the sound of approaching voices coming closer. She pulled another bottle of spirit gases from her skirt pocket and braced expecting her rival to appear. The voices were coming closer from the archway accompanied by the sound of footsteps.

"Harvey, darling…" Cheryl walked arm and arm with the young man who had been her youngest son. "I can't believe how handsome you grew up to be."

"So, you're my real mother." He believed her story of being accidentally switched at birth. "Do I have brothers and sisters?"

"Yes, sweetheart, two brothers and five sisters…" Cheryl beamed lovingly over him. "In fact, your sister, Maddie, works a few miles from here. She's a candy counter girl at the Tipton Hotel…." She realized the college building wasn't quite empty.

"Harvey??" Sabrina stood watching from the quad. "Get away from her!"

"Sabrina?" The hockey athlete recognized his former girlfriend and looked back to the woman claiming to be his mother. "Is this a magic thing?" He had flashbacked on other weird incidents in his life with her.

"I'm getting so sick of sending you off, Angelique." Harridge felt one of the souls inside her reaching out from her and tried to quell it. "And, oh, look!" Cheryl shined almost to the point of laughter. "And this time you brought a friend! She's a bit young for magic, Angelique. You sure scraped the bottom of the barrel, didn't you?" She looked to Harvey. "Harvey, sweetheart, rid me of them."

"I love you, mom." Harvey was now overwhelmed by his past life. His demeanor became more surly and upset as he stood his ground and conjured a beam of momentum knocking Angelique and Sabrina off their feet.

"How'd he do that?!" Sabrina had been tossed over the sofa.

"It's her!!" Angelique groaned from the stress her spine was taking. "She has him under her power!" The conjuror of Collinwood looked up from the floor.

"Sorry, Harvey…" Sabrina waved her arm and wiped him temporarily from existence. Cheryl reacted at that feat. Just who was she dealing with? Removed from the college and snapped from his trance, Harvey winked out from the commons room and fell to his feet somewhere else in the world. What did Sabrina do to him this time?! He'd been zapped into dreams and other worlds, turned into a knight and forced into disposable fairy tale realities, but what did she do to him now? Better yet, where had she sent him? He looked up into basement rafters and realized he was in the ground floor of someone's house. There were four guys sitting around him in a circle looking down upon him.

"Hyde!" Michael Kelso stood flaunting a piece of rolled up weed. "This is your best stuff yet!!"

"Where did you send him?" In the present of Westbridge College, Cheryl faced off against Sabrina.

"The past, the future…" Sabrina rose to her feet, quirkily amused a bit. "I'm not sure." She cockily tilted her head. "Do you really want to mess with me?" There was a grinding noise over her head. A wood ceiling tile came loose and cracked itself over her head, laying the inexperienced Wiccan out cold.

"Do you really want to mess with me?" Cheryl mimicked her and looked over toward Angelique. "I gave you every chance to go home." Her head turning in discomfort, she groaned and winced from the one soul within her trying to fight her. Angelique tried to summon the ghosts of the ancestors again, but Cheryl shattered that spell before it hit the floor. "It looks like you give me no choice. I'm going to have to… William, what the hell's wrong with you?!" She spoke to the soul of her eldest adult son within her.

"William!" Angelique called for her son. "Fight her! Return to me!!" A piece of bric-a-brac flew across the room and nearly hit the beautiful blonde sorceress. With her attention diverted, she could not divest the mental precision of her spells.

"William!" Cheryl bent over holding her abdomen. "I can't fight this woman and you! What's wrong with you?!"

"Didn't you know?" Angelique summoned up globes of mystical energy crackling around her hands. "My son traveled back in time from the future and gave his life for me! He became his own reincarnation!" She hurled the mystical balls of force at Cheryl trying to knock her over. The French sorceress reeled back and forth from the bombardments and crashed backward into the trophy case behind her. She tumbled backward toward the floor, hissed through her gritted teeth and invoked a few secret protection spells. Angelique looked over Sabrina groaning in pain, and once she was sure she was okay, crossed over to Harridge on the floor. Breathing heavily, the physical activity itself wearing her out, she crossed the width of the hall and grabbed the French sorceress by her hair to look squarely into her eyes.

"I will continue fighting you until you give me my son back and give up all those other children." She gasped with her breath racing between her words. "I'm so sorry your children were taken from you, but nothing gives you the right to break the hearts of other mothers as your heart was broken." Angelique started pleading with the heart of a mother who loved her son. "I want my son back!"

"Thank you for that last piece of info, Angelique." Cheryl backed up from the wily witch. "I was wondering why my son's soul was folded. I'll tell you something in return." She grinned connivingly. "The men who killed me… One of them was the grandson of a certain Norse thunder-god…" She waved Angelique away from her and flung her across the hall with a spell. The sworn protector of Collinwood hit the wall and knocked loose the decorations behind her.

"I would have spared you for returning my son to me!!" She screeched with the scream of a banshee. "But you can now die with all the rest of them!!" She turned round once and faced the stricken witch once again. "Peel back the ages of time. Feel your true age as you should be… You and your little protégé! Wither away and become as you should be!!" She started accelerating the timestream around Angelique.

"Mrs. Collins!!" Sabrina lifted her head and watched Angelique growing older and older, her beautiful face becoming gaunt and peeling back against the bones of her head. Her frame was deteriorating, her hair wasting away. As the ages of time wasted her away, Sabrina felt herself getting stronger, she felt herself becoming the mature more powerful Wiccan she was going to be. A Wiccan with an innate immortality, a witch more powerful than a human sorceress… as time matured her into full adulthood, her mystical powers increased and she could hold her ground. So this was what it was like to be almost a god... she reached forward to catch the mystical energy pouring around her fingers, and called out one name with tears streaming from her face.

"For Harvey!!"

"Why aren't you dying?!" Cheryl began sliding backward. She folded over in pain as one of the souls within her started pulling from her and with him, all the others. The university hall around her started morphing and changing. The seating area became a French parlor. The ceiling pressed upward as borders and decorations became balustrades and railing. The shattered trophy case turned into the sides of a grand fireplace. She had been here before as the East fought against western invaders, her pagan forefathers were slowly being forgotten for other beliefs and the art of science pushed mankind to explore the world beyond the sea. Her children were alive once more and standing by her, but this time, they were pulling away from her. They wanted their own lives, their own futures… they wanted to live. She reached out to them as they developed into adults before her then vanished from view. There was a flash as the past and present caught up with each other and corrected itself.

"If you want another daughter…" Sabrina now stood with the pose and demeanor of a middle-aged woman at the pinnacle of her mystical power. "Take me!!" Cheryl's eyes widened to see her racing toward her. She turned to retreat and felt Sabrina pushing her over on to the floor. There was a scream as campus security guards rushed the commons area and held off from the spectral lights flying off and darting from the area. The portraits of people on campus reacted to the spectacle. Photos of past alumni closed their eyes looked away. Torrents of hurricane force winds were pouring from the inside of the room blowing away security guards, students and staff. Crawling from the room, Sabrina winced from what she had done. There was a powerful pain ebbing away at her life force. She reached to her chest to relieve the pain then down to her abdomen. So that's where they were… She had absorbed the children!

"Go away home!" She screamed in pain. "Go away home!!" She felt her body being ripped apart as Harridge grabbed and screamed for the fleeing orbs of light. Pushing Sabrina's head away, her other hand grasping at the orbs swelling to human size, the demented sorceress once more tried to grab them but something was holding her back. She looked back to Angelique clutching at her neck. Her aged arms were tightening around her throat. Her chest fighting for yet another breath, Harridge started to gesture at her, but found her arm fading away.

"What did you do?!" Her voice was screaming at Sabrina. "What did you do?!" Angelique had reached for the timeless sorceress but fell through her while clutching at empty space. Her essence fading, her children freed and vanishing from her, Harridge screamed with hostility from the spirit world, her last essence in the flickering room folding over Sabrina collapsing to the floor. Angelique opened her eyes to yet another person.

"Mom?" William Collins started crying upon the withered and barely living remains of his mother. Her aged eyes tried looking up at him, her shaking withered arms groaning to reach to him. Her raspy voice gasped once as he lifted her up into his arms. He lifted her up tiredly as Sabrina reached to touch him. When her fingers grazed his shoulder, the room burst with another explosion of light.

Angelique gasped and snapped back into consciousness from the brink of illusion. She was standing in the middle of the Old House parlor. She recognized her husband's portrait by Sam Evans over the mantel, the Queen Anne clock given him by his father and inhaled ever scent and nuance of the room. Her fingers lifted up a gold-framed mirror from the table and looked at her face. She was young again! Well, young for a three hundred year old witch who looked to be in her late forties… She turned round looking for her Barnabas, hastening her step around to the dining room beyond the parlor and through the back way to the kitchen. The refrigerator door was open; someone was stopped behind it rummaging for food. When she came up upon it beaming, her son stood up straight behind her.

"We're out of Swiss cheese." He said, but reacted confused when his mother instead pulled him close and hugged him. She was crying a bit too. He was back to her! She had him back! She loved him so much.

"William, darling..." Confused as she was, Angelique loved her son more than herself. "You're back! You're back!"

"I still won't talk to Amanda." He reiterated his previous point then noticed someone else. There was another person in the Old house kitchen.

"Hi, Collinwood." Sabrina stood near the back stairs leaning back against the broom closet leading to the mud porch. She looked great! More incredible than ever... She was wearing a long black dress like a witch's flying suit with a red scarf around her neck and denim jacket. They shared a memory between them and reflected on a romance that just didn't work.

"What are you doing here?"

"Visiting your mom."

"Oh…" William stepped backward just a foot or two from his mother and eyed Sabrina over to admire her figure. "I was thinking about you this morning. I had a crazy dream last night you and my mom were wrestling with this strange woman at my college."

"Well," Sabrina mugged and looked secretly to Angelique. "That's different than the dreams you had of me flying around in a red cape and big "S" across my augmented chest."

"Yeah…" William laughed with his old girlfriend and turned away to the stairs. He stopped a bit confused, reacted a bit spooked and looked back to her. "Wait, I never told you about those dreams..." She had creeped him out again. A bit wary of her, he turned up the back stairs and raced to his room above the kitchen. Angelique began musing happily to have him back. She was home, and with her son!

"He still thinks he's Batman, doesn't he?" Sabrina recalled her time with the young heir.

"Sabrina, " Angelique looked upon her. "What happened?"

"I don't know." The young sorceress dipped into the cookie jar for homemade cookie. "I zapped everyone home and the next thing I knew it was the next day. I lost twelve hours fixing everything."

"And Harridge?" Angelique feared. "Will she be back?"

"I don't know…" Sabrina confessed to her mentor. "But for a moment…. I was one with her. I barely remember a single thing I did."

On the edge of the estate, Quentin Collins parked the Collins family van outside the tree-shaded driveway of Rose Cottage and wandered in the back way into the kitchen mired in deep thought. Maggie looked up to him leaning over the newspaper with a cup of coffee. He gave her a kiss to the top of her head and pulled open the refrigerator.

"How's Amanda?" Quentin looked into the icebox for an after-morning snack.

"She looked at these ads…" Maggie held up the Collinsport Courier. "She's got her choices down to a white '85 Volkswagen convertible, a used 1990 blue Ford Tempo with an advanced sound system and a classic '89 Porsche needing a paint job."

"I remember being happy with a horse-drawn buggy as a boy." Quentin made a veiled reference to his youth in the 1870s. Upstairs and above the dining room, the red-haired maiden in question scoured her closet for her sweater. She had not seen her favorite angora sweater in two weeks. If it showed up in Sara's closet or on Lizzie's back, she was tossing someone off a balcony. She was so sick and tired of them running her life and invading her closet. Pulling out her black jacket, she welcomed it back by sliding her arms into it and pulling her long red locks out from inside it. She wished she had her cousin Sara's legs and Lizzie's boobs. Her lips gasped as she turned away, picked up a barrette to pin her hair back and turned to the mirror, but in addition to her reflection, she saw another face looking out at her. She looked behind her, then back upon the strange woman looking at her from beyond her reflection.

"Hello, Amanda…" Cheryl Harridge looked out of the mirror at the troubled young girl. "How would you like to have any boy you wanted? I can help you make it so." An evil grin passed over her lips.

END


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